


Keratitis Sicca

by faithinthepoor



Series: Desperate Housewives [13]
Category: Desperate Housewives
Genre: Canon Het Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Next</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keratitis Sicca

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [Unseemly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/668467), [The Theory of Everything](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor), [Here There Be Dragons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673221), [Somnambulist](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673229), [Wishin’ and Hopin’](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673233), [Nosology](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673238), [Boundary Violations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673240), [Fractals](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673250), [Windmill Tilting](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673255), [Ambitendency](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673262), [Heisenberg Territory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673272) and [The Illusions of Prisms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673700)

She is fairly certain that she is broken, she can’t claim to be the world’s leading authority on grief but she’s not a novice at this either and she knows it shouldn’t feel this way. There is definitely something wrong with her, she knows it’s natural to try and avoid pain, to embrace denial as if she were drowning and it were a life preserver, but she would welcome pain, she’d be content for it to be her constant companion. She needs pain, needs to prove that she’s hurting, needs it to assuage or at least outweigh her guilt. The experts are wrong, there are no stages to this, she does flirt with anger and with bargaining but these are simply transitory moments of weakness, not transitions and certainly not markers of progress. Eighteen years of life should amount to more than this. Despite their recent problems, Rex’s death should cripple her; she shouldn’t be able to breathe, let alone function, she should carry on in a perfunctory manner but that’s simply not the case. She is not numb, she is not just going through the motions and she is not constantly reminding herself that he will never walk through the door again. She tries to convince herself that she has shut off her feelings as form of protection but she knows that’s not true. She feels so much, all of it powerful and most of it inappropriate. She feels disconnected from her children, she feels the same contempt for her mother-in-law that she always did, she feels her distance from Lynette but most of all she feels guilt.

Her organisational skills are unaffected and she is certain that Rex’s funeral will be memorable, it will be the perfection that she envisions and not the spectacle that Phyllis is trying to force upon her. Her façade is near perfect, she is every inch the portrait of the widow that they all expect her to be and no-one doubts that in her case this would be accompanied by an immaculate house and incomparable grooming. The only flaw is her bedroom, her bed has been unmade for hours, a small indication that she is not in complete control. It’s not exactly something that anyone would condemn her for, unless they knew the reasons behind her failure to attend the household chore with the dedication of zealot.

She has tried to remove the sheets but finds herself unable to complete the task. In her mind they smell of Rex and Lynette, of her devotion and her betrayal, of a life that’s over and a life that never had the chance to begin. She is convinced that she will have to destroy the sheets, erase them from existence, even if she will never be able to eradicate them from her memory. It’s not the idea of burning the sheets that disturbs her, it’s the impact that this will have on her linen rotation – she will need to replace them and she’s not ready for that, not prepared to face the fact the she was meant to be buying new sheets for something entirely different, something that will probably never happen now that fate has intervened and she’s ashamed to admit that, right now, that thought hurts more than it should. 

She would have liked to have been able to give Lynette more but comforts herself with the knowledge that she did give her the opportunity to sleep in her arms. It wasn’t quite as long or as romantic as she had imagined but it’s probably better than nothing. Lynette was incredibly comforting and any physical contact was chaste but there was still an undeniable sexual energy between them that she found unsettling given the situation. She dozed fitfully, her dreams a confusing conglomeration of disjointed images - nightmare scenarios washed out with sunlight, interspaced with moments of joy that splintered without warning. Each time she woke Lynette was clinging to her, blonde hair splayed across her chest, tendrils sticking to her skin as though they were fingers staking Lynette’s claim on her. She squirmed and she fidgeted but Lynnette slept on, so as the sky began to lighten she shook her sleeping beauty awake.

Lynette didn’t question her actions, other than to arch her body in protest and crinkle her eyes in an adorable fashion as she stretched and groaned, “You want me to go?”

She wasn’t sure how she was meant to answer that, it wasn’t so much that wanted Lynette to go, in fact a large part of her would have been happy for Lynette to stay forever, “I have a lot to do today and you should get home before your unruly brood rises.” 

“I have a lot to do too, I may need to borrow some things off you,” Lynette obviously detected her unspoken question but didn’t feel it was the right time to address it, “We can talk about it later, I’d better go or I will just go back to sleep.” In a move that displayed little co-ordination, Lynette clumsily rolled out of bed and then waited impatiently for her to do the same. When Bree was standing, Lynette laced their fingers together and led her downstairs. Bree halted their progress at the door wanting to tell Lynette so much but finding that she didn’t have the words. She tried to tell herself that Lynette is just the brashness and tactlessness that she so often projects, because that would have made it easier to push out of the house, but once again Lynette’s depth and layers surprised her, with wide eyes she stood on tip-toes to place a kiss on Bree’s forehead before lowering herself and whispering in her ear, “It’s ok, I know, you don’t have to tell me.”

“Yes I do.”

Lynette’s mouth quirked into a half smile, “And you will when the time is right. You’ll call me later?” She had the grace to phrase it as a question even though they both knew it was a forgone conclusion. Bree nodded in response and watched Lynette slip out of the door.

At 9AM, the sheet crisis still unresolved, she makes a phone call to her best friend Lynette Scavo to inform her of Rex’s death. She sees this as an important distinction, her would-be lover may be aware of the news, however tacit her acknowledgement, but her neighbour and Tom Scavo’s wife needs to be informed. Lynette seems to understand her reasoning and plays along, even asking for the scarf before she has a chance to tell her the important information. All in all it goes much more smoothly than she could have hoped, Lynette doesn’t even protest when she asks her to tell the others. She is beginning to imagine that she is going to survive this when the girls appear and shatter her illusions. She knows it’s illogical but somehow Susan and Gabby calling her ‘honey’ is perfectly acceptable but Lynette referring to her as ‘sweetie’ feels like it’s tantamount to a confession of infidelity. The others don’t seem to react so she has to consider that the seductiveness of Lynette’s tone maybe something that only she can hear but as Phyllis makes her melodramatic entry she gives thanks that the woman is terminally self involved because she honestly believes that if Phyllis had opened her eyes she would have seen the way Lynette effects her, that she can’t stop looking at her or that when Lynette touches her, even innocent, comforting contact sets her on fire.

Her gratitude over Phyllis’ egocentrism is short lived. As she attempts to dodge the barbs and the overt manipulation she wishes that she’d married an orphan or maybe that Rex had hatched from an egg. Phyllis’ comment regarding her breast size has its desired effect, she begins to doubt her own attractiveness and has to resist the temptation to call Lynette and get her opinion on the matter. It’s then that she realises she has backed herself into a corner where the one person she needs for support is the one person that she can’t have. 

For all her many and varied flaws, Phyllis is not without her uses, in her effort to prove her superiority to Bree she changes the bedding and pointedly hands the freshly laundered items to Bree. She doesn’t actually experience a sense of relief but it does make it easier to throw them in the bin, the act distresses her greatly and she only just manages to get them into the receptacle before she vomits. 

The funeral isn’t quite what she envisioned but it will definitely be remembered. She considers her dignity a small price to pay compared with having to live with her final memory of Rex being in the garish garment that Phyllis selected or with Phyllis spending eternity thinking that she had won. Rex did look magnificent in Tom’s tie but she will never be certain if she chose it because of it’s appearance or as her symbolic way of confessing to Rex that he and Tom are forever linked via the sins that she and Lynette have committed. 

Despite the myriad signs it is the simplest thing that crystallises for her that things are irrevocably changed. As they walk along Wisteria Lane after the funeral she does her best to avoid Lynette, clutching Gabrielle’s arm as if this will somehow repel any contact from the blonde but this doesn’t stop Lynette from stroking her arm or the fact that, even with a layer of clothing between them, her touch burns. Susan is prattling on about Mary Alice’s past, which causes Lynette to comment, “Can you imagine living with that guilt?” In an eerie moment of simpatico her eyes lock with Lynette’s and with brutal clarity she knows that it really is over.

When she returns to her house she commits herself to a task that is as necessary as it is soul destroying. She has been known to cry about chips in her crystal or a run in her stockings but she hasn’t wept since her initial breakdown, she has stopped crying over Rex and she doesn’t cry over this. Maybe there is a glitch in her software or maybe her hardwiring is wrong. Her eyes are dry as she seals Lynette’s key into an envelope and as she looks at her perfect copperplate writing, she wishes that for once in her life she’d produced something less than prefect, something smudged and damp, because when one gives up ones hopes and dreams, there really should be tears.


End file.
